Finding Katie

Chapter 30

Ben

I stared at the papers in my hand as I slowly fell back in the chair. I wasn't sure if I was breathing. Or sitting or standing or dreaming. Wasn't sure if I'd yet grasped all that Katie had written to me.

The letter fell to the desk as my lungs contracted. What had I done?

Something was constricting my chest so hard it physically hurt, every breath I dragged in grated in my throat. Why the hell hadn't she told me?

She'd been about to. I looked at the letter again, my eyes running down the lines, over every word. Everything she'd written here, Katie would have told me later today on the date she'd asked me to have patience for so as not to ruin my weekend. I knew the truth of that like I knew the sky was blue. But James had forestalled her.

At my instigation. And I hadn't even given her a chance to tell me herself.

Katie had asked if I'd let her explain, and I'd refused to even listen to her.

Elbows on the desk, I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. Breathed in and held it for a few seconds, then released it. And then repeated the motion until I was sure I could look up again without sending my fist through the wall.

Fuck!

My gaze landed on the flash drive on the desk between my elbows.

I reached for it so fast, I sent it sliding across the surface instead and only caught it right before it fell over the edge. It took three attempts before I could fit it into the slot in my computer.

There was only one file on the drive; an audio file. It started abruptly midsentence.

"–knew it was you right away."

By the first word, I recognized the voice that resonated in my office and pressed pause. Dave's sneer formed my hands back into fists.

It wasn't hard to guess who he was talking to, whose voice I'd hear next on the recording, and it made my breathing quicken. But I had to hear this.

Breathing in as deeply as it was possible, I turned the volume down a little so as not to attract Liam's attention and pressed play again.

"Likewise." Katie's even voice made me fall back in the chair. It cut right through my chest. "Though you've less hair now and more wrinkles."

Dave's laugh sounded over the noise of traffic in the background, but both it and the voices were slightly muffled. The device recording, her phone most likely, must have been in Katie's pocket or bag.

"Always so observant, Vanessa," he continued, "but you were always a precocious child. I take it your presence back here means you and your mum have finally squandered your way through your dad's money."

There was a beat of silence before she replied in a voice utterly flat. "Mum's dead."

"Oh, how very sad for you."

The mocking scorn in Dave's voice made my jaw clench so hard it creaked. I stared blindly out of the window, my nostrils flaring.

Dave continued, his voice hardening, "Then I have only you to help me."

For a moment only cars honking at each other and a wailing siren could be heard, then Katie said, "Help you?"

I could hear the apprehension in her voice, the faint shaking and her attempt to quell it, and it made my hands grip the armrests of my chair so tight my knuckles turned white.

"Yes," Dave added with a short chortle. His voice lowered, but his smirk was still evident over the background noise. "Lots of people still remember your dearest dad, and not too fondly. I'm sure they'd be most interested in learning where you and your mum have been hiding all these years and that you're back again. The police, especially. Such a shame if your new name and that pretty face of yours should end up on the front page of The Daily Mail."